Teen decides she’s not trans, after all, but struggles with peer pressure

January 19, 2016

The guest post below, by pj white, is the personal account of a mother whose teen daughter temporarily identified as “trans,” but at 16, desisted.

While “gender specialists” and researchers often discuss younger children who persist in their gender dysphoria as they reach puberty, next to nothing is said about a phenomenon that more and more of us parents have personally experienced: the teenage daughter who, never having had a problem with being female as a child, suddenly insists she is trans at puberty–after a heaping helping of social media propaganda. And often these girls, like pj’s daughter, have other mental health issues that, once explored and addressed, help alleviate the desire to “transition.”

Every parent will respond to this situation in a different way; I’m grateful to pj for sharing her own parenting journey with us in such detail. And I’m particularly glad to hear directly from…

Jummy, I heard an NPR segement the other day with a gender specialist and Marlo Mack. Definitely a marketing/ brand building campaign. Very disturbing.

What’s more disturbing is the gender specialist saying that it’s either support your kids’ transition or your kid dies and that kids as old as 18 months can be diagnosed as trans! That’s literally what she said on air. No mention of the fact that the vast majority of gender dysphoric kids grow out of it by their teens.

I’m reminded lately of the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic of the 80’s-90’s. Few, at the time, questioned the testimony of the supposedly abused children, even as the “allegations” grew outlandish and impossible. None at the time scrutinized the interview process used by police and social workers. Later, we found that they were all asked leading questions and essentially pressured into saying “yes” to highly impossible scenarios involving mass murder, levitation and a vast satanic conspiracy. All of it was suggested to the children; first by the media and parents(and then kids would construct stories on the playground based on the hysteria which would be used against innocent people) then by cops and so on. The panic ruined lives, destroyed families, and wrecked unfathomable guilt on the kids involved.

Anyway, Point is, children are highly impressionable; by parents, teachers, peers, and the social and media environment we all live in- adults take advantage of this for their own ambitions. Im highly skeptical whenever I hear/read young children’s testimony about their gender identity, especially in the context of them being supposedly trans.

“I’m reminded lately of the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic of the 80’s-90’s.”

YES. Social contagion fueled by a profound shifts in social norms. In the case of the Satanic Panic, the removal of the social taboo against discussing childhood sexual abuse and incest and the resulting explosion of awareness – combined with the economic restructuring of American households from single income to dual income, caused by the both the women’s movement and the crash of the 1970’s.

In the case of Transgender Children- fueled by the normalization of homosexuality and the resulting explosion of awareness, combined with the virtualization of social identities caused by the internet and the concurrent marketing of medical lifestylism.

I’d also add as contributing social factors lingering homophobia in conservative families, and the increasing availability of synthetic sex hormones since the first half of the 20th century (Sheila Jeffreys calls the trans thing iatrogenic, bc the possibility of treatment causes the disease).

Historian Joanne Meyerowitz’s book “How Sex Changed” is superb, and covers the underlying technological developments in an accessible, accurate way.

You see where I’m going with this. Transgenderism is medically legitimate only in the sense that the go forth and assassinate the character and attack the professional standing of any medical professional who refuses disputes their BS.

And this happens to include the most rigorous thinkers in the profession.

Gallus, I’ve been using the Satanic Panic as a parallel to the trans cult in conversations with others for a while, but could never put it as succinctly as you have – “social contagion fueled by profound shifts in social norms” – and draw the parallels to the underlying changes in western society that gave rise to the phenomena.

I also think there was a distinctly anti-woman reason that explains the Satanic Panic gained traction in the media: it was a reaction against mothers in the workforce, and gave people cover to argue that women should stay at home (rather than drop their kids off at Beelzebub’s Daycare). I wonder if there is a similar explanation for the explosion of the trans narrative in the media? I just can’t quite work out WHY an issue that affects a vanishingly small portion of the population appears to get so much coverage. What issue are we dog-whistling when we talk about trans rights?

I fully expect that after the peak trans wave crashes and recedes, the comparison to the Satanic Panic and other similar phenomenon will be borne out, and I think the ideas in your post would make for a great pop longform piece. If only a major media outlet would have the guts to publish it and a journalist be willing to endure the attacks it would no doubt inspire.

Agreed that there is a distinctly anti-woman reason underlying all of these phenomena.

“What issue are we dog-whistling when we talk about trans rights?”

The ritualized cultural expression, propagation, and enforcement of male domination and female oppression: the mechanisms of “Gender” itself. Transgender visibilizes gender. Transgender is also a safety valve created to siphon off potential gender rebellion into a form that preserves female subordination to males. Transgender forces people to see what ubiquity otherwise renders invisible. It’s a form of unveiling or mass consciousness raising about gender itself, one that can be absorbed safely without destabilizing the male supremacy upon which human society is organized on every level.

Public fascination with transgender is a step towards mass consciousness of the social norms of male domination. This leap forward in consciousness of gender will provide an opportunity for women to deconstruct and ultimately eliminate gender. That is why it is so important for us to participate in the process.

I think we heard the same show. When I am confronted with a presentation like that, it’s like looking straight into the sun, if it were that light were pure nonsense. Everything she says is nonsense, and it’s nonsense that the nonsense is framed as profundity. And there, alone in my car, with the only objecting voice being the one in my own head, it feels like death. Death by nonsense. Like being skeletonized by a white, hot blastwave of five megatons of pure fucking nonsense.

I didn’t hear the one you did but I listened to the one about Wyatt/Nicole Maines a few months ago and it was the same nutty nonsense about the brains of six month old fetuses asking themselves “am I a girl brain or a boy brain”, and the appropriate or in this case the inappropriate hormones flooding in and feminizing the brain of a male fetus. First she says that gender identity is in the brain and that it is set prenatally and then she says that gender is fluid, isn’t necessarily fixed and is “dynamic” which is just self-contradictory and even people listening who aren’t familiar with transgenderism would be now smelling a rat. What is most disheartening is that while NPR challenges and is critical of many of the guests and their claims that come on their program, asking intelligent and probing questions, yet on the topic of trans it is just uncritical acceptance and fawning agreement and it really feels like a betrayal.

People change their minds, and often, from what I have seen. I wonder if this type of discussion will be considered hate speech in the near future. I have come across peer pressure to be Trans.

Look on the many advice boards across the net. Kids trying to fit into boxes and questioning themselves only to be told in one sentence they are probably Trans then getting love bombed if they show an interest to the affirmative. It is heady stuff for a young person who thinks and breathes the internet.
As for saying toddlers are capable of being Trans, its plain poppycock.

Oh, just for fun I noticed today in the Daily Mail Online, they captioned a photo of Kris Jenner-
‘Not mincing words: ‘You’re never not on your phone,’ said the ex-wife of Bruce Jenner,66′.

Not sure how that passed muster or if Caitlyn will be asking for an apology.

“A key change is de-pathologizing gender identity,” offers Joshua Safer, an endocrinologist and professor at Boston University School of Medicine who is also a spokesperson for WPATH. “You don’t have to have a mental illness to be treated for being transgender … [We] are taking a view along the lines that this is a biological entity that may manifest differently in different people, e.g. in a non-binary fashion, and the medical goal is to be patient-centred, helpful and safe.” Dr. Safer is also a member of the Endocrine Society, which will be publishing “major” new clinincial guidelines for all trans patients in late 2016 or early 2017 to replace existing recommended practices from 2009.”